Why I love my Aminals.

There's a letter sized sign on my door, right next to the Positive Space one I printed off. It reads, "Welcome to Guyzeeland." We now have a population of 189, 190 including myself in our area. I explain our large family to people simply by telling them that I was a lonely child.

While this was true, I think it warrants a better explanation. Like how my brother stopped at sixty children and I stopped at...well, I haven't stopped yet. You see, we're a good family! We all love each other, and sometimes we argue, and sometimes the wait period for surgery grows and people get antsy, but all in all we're a wonderful family.

We can rely on each other. When I don't feel like talking to anyone I can just talk to them. And I don't even have to speak out loud, because we're all telepathically connected! Even though sometimes they don't get it, someone in the family will. And there's always someone to hug, when I don't want to hug a human.

And now, we'd really, really like to eat.

I am feeling anger.

There is an ugly clothes hamper in my room. I have several library books to return that are all different sizes. The vacuum is broken. I don't have curtains. THERE ARE MANY THINGS AROUND ME THAT ARE NOT PARALLEL.

I am going to try not to throw this ugly clothes hamper at a person. I am going to hold on to my library books until tomorrow morning. I will wait until the vacuum is fixed to make my nice vacuum lines. I will fix this makeshift curtain until I can purchase normal ones. I will keep writing even though I want to SCREAM and THROW and DESTROY everything in my room that is not clean and orderly.

I will try to relax without doing stupid things. I will try to relax...

She was Beautiful.

She took her own life, did you know that? They didn’t want anyone to know, so the answer always was, “a sudden loss.” Sudden. She was dying for years and no one noticed except me. I knew because she told me. Matter-of-a-factly one day she just looked me in the eye and told me that she was dying. At first I thought she had a disease or some kind of pre-teen ‘dying of a broken heart’ thing but it turns out she was serious. I realized that, after a point. I noticed from afar, (we were friends only in front of each other at the time) after she told me, all the pained looks she had on her face in between people. I guess no one else was looking.

“Why are you doing this?” I’d asked her once. School had just started for another year and we felt the breath of autumn on our backs, and she’d called to ask me if I wanted to touch its’ heart. I had no idea what she was saying until she translated that into, ‘want to go to the park?’

She turned to me, straggly pieces of hair stuck up in the wind. “I didn’t ask for this,” she whispered.

“Can’t you make it stop?” although I knew well enough that she couldn’t. I couldn’t either.

“I can’t stop it for either one of us.” She took a skip forward, her pale fingers dancing over the air and faced me, dead on. “I wish I could, you know that right?”

“I know. I’m not all stupid man/boy.”

“More like boy/man!” and she laughed, that laugh that haunts me because I can hear it now. I can tell.

So we kept going on like that. Moments of eloquence followed by a shallow struggle to pull out of the awkward moments we created. Or she did, I was always unnerved by the way she got straight to the point. No ambling.

She called herself, “less than ordinary.”

She prayed for fifteen years then noticed she didn’t think anyone was there.

She forced me to make promises, and I did the same to her.

She stared in the mirror and saw nothing.

I’m telling you the truth. It wasn’t a sudden death. It wasn’t quick, it wasn’t painless. She was my beautiful, my silent and I don’t know exactly when it happened. It must have been years ago. But to everyone else, it was two nights ago, at 2:47 in the morning and they all thought, “what a shame” when they saw her lying there. I’m ashamed.

-written march, 2006.